


Rattenkönig

by larissabernstein



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: Erika's Lair Discord Server, Ficlet, Gen, Minor Character(s), Podfic, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Available, Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes, Prize Phiclet, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 14:38:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20175913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larissabernstein/pseuds/larissabernstein
Summary: He certainly was an odd fellow.A prize phiclet for phana-banana, the winner of the July art contest hosted by Erika's Lair on Discord. Leroux-verse.Now with added podphic.





	Rattenkönig

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Phana_Banana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phana_Banana/gifts).

**Rattenkönig**

He certainly was an odd fellow, the gnarly old man, with his shaky lantern perennially sticking out from his shape like a sore limb, directing its warm yellow glow this way and that way through the labyrinth of stone and damp and fust, always in haste, always moving, less an intruder than an animate part of the opera house, a grotesque statue come to life, and Erik could forgive him for polluting the darkness with the nervous flickers of this vagrant light, that drew out the colonies of rats from their hiding places in the subterranean otherworld.

Where the legendary Pied Piper had enchanted with orphic music to lead his procession of doomed beings into the abyss, the _Garnier_’s rat-catcher was a far cry from such an artful _danse macabre_, a mere caricature, that nevertheless did a decent job. Irresistible the wrinkled face seemed to be to these otherwise so resourceful creatures that it lured out to play, when the lantern’s fire utilised the man’s hardened features to their full dramatic potential, and light and shadow elevated this head to a fiery spectre of its own, floating illuminated and disembodied through the night, carried not by a single human form, but a teeming mass of writhing fur and thousands of nails and tails and teeth, a shabby flying carpet propelling the unlikely enchanter through the tunnels and hallways, to the cacophonous tune of scratching and scraping and squeaking, the man seemingly as much their conductor as their captive.

By unspoken agreement, unless one counts the back and forth of shadows and the glow of the lantern and its reflection in sunken eyes of the same yellow colour as a communication of sorts, the rat-catcher never once dared to cross the Styx and venture into Erik’s lair below the fifth cellar. A wise decision, given the traps that were decidedly for bigger prey than rats and guarded the passages to his home, and it spared both of them the nuisance of a messy death. (And the man was rather useful, Erik had to admit, decimating — or at least entertaining — the number of resident rats in the building enough to keep them manageable and Erik’s library and sheet music mostly unharmed.)

There must have been several such men of this profession over the years, Erik was certain, different men in succession, but they all blurred into the same figure — a theatrical character of sorts, a mad little Puck. It brought Erik no small amount of entertainment to watch the almost ghostly appearance dash through the building, as if it were a conjuring trick of his own making, to the often scandalised shrieks of the frightened ballet _rats_ — “it’s the ghost! it’s the phantom!” — and the annoyance of startled stagehands. An unwitting messenger of terror travelling between the world of light above and the realm of the shades beneath, the man had nothing to fear from Erik, as long as he kept to his mad business of driving his four-legged legion through the _Garnier_, and his only sin — the sin of having a face, an utterly normal face in daylight — could be forgiven under the circumstances.

Podphic:


End file.
